Eco-saboteur Rebecca Rubin lay low
in her native Canada, a fugitive on the run from a slew of federal arson charges
awaiting her back in the U.S.

She worked as a nanny, tended to animals,
and stayed under the radar, creating a new life for herself underground. But
she wouldn't marry, wouldn't bear children, her lawyer said, because she knew one
day she would have to stand up to account for her crimes.

Wearing blue jail scrubs and ankle
chains, she looked younger than her 40 years. She is still vegan lean, having
refused meat or other animal products in the Multnomah County Detention Center,
where she has been locked up for months.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen F.
Peifer recounted Rubin's crimes as part of the largest group of eco-saboteurs ever taken
down by the FBI. They called themselves The Family and committed an estimated $40 million in damage from 1996 to
2001.

After Peifer concluded, the judge asked Rubin, "Are all these facts true?"

"They are," Rubin said in a soft voice.

She participated in four crimes:

In November 1997, she freed 400 wild horses from a U.S. Bureau of Land
management corral in Burns as others set the place ablaze.

The following October, she and others carried gasoline and timing devices up
to a snowy ski resort under construction in Vail, Colo. There they performed reconnaissance
for an arson that was intended as a protest against expansion into pristine
wilderness.

But the digital timing devices weren't functioning well in the cold, and there
were other logistical problems. So they abandoned their plans, leaving the
gasoline on the mountain.

Rubin did not join the two arsonists who on Oct. 19, 1998, climbed back onto the
mountain and set fire to the Two Elk Lodge, ski lifts and other facilities on
behalf of the Earth Liberation Front. The $12 million fire, which stamped the
ELF name into the American consciousness, stood for years as the nation's most
destructive act of eco-sabotage.

Just before Christmas 1998, Rubin took part in an attempt to set fire to
the headquarters of U.S. Forest Industries in Medford. Just after the holiday, others went back and
carried out the job successfully, causing $700,000 in damage.

She went home to Canada. But in 2001, she returned to the U.S. to help loose
horses from a BLM horse and burro corral at Litchfield, Calif. The saboteurs she was
traveling with set a fire that destroyed a barn and 250 tons of hay.

Rubin returned to Canada, where she worked for animal rescue groups until
2004, said her lawyer, Richard J. Troberman of Seattle. She returned to California to work as a field intern for Ventana Wildlife Society, which runs
a popular condor reintroduction program.

When the internship ended in 2005, Rubin returned to Canada.
She was still living there in early 2006, when prosecutors in Oregon indicted
her and 10 others for their roles with The Family. By then, the FBI had begun
to round up many of its suspects.

Rubin went underground. With her face appearing on wanted
posters and a $50,000 reward offered for her capture, she got her first taste of
the unique punishment only fugitives understand.

"It's like being in a prison without walls," Troberman said.

Rubin tried to surrender to U.S.
authorities in 2009, said Troberman. But there were holdups between Rubin's
lawyers and the U.S. government.

Federal prosecutors in California
were adamant that Rubin must serve at least 30 years in prison unless she
agreed to give up the names of her co-conspirators and offer other assistance
to the government. But she steadfastly refused to turn over the names of anyone
involved with the ALF or ELF.

Eventually, prosecutors in
California agreed to move the case against Rubin to Oregon, and lawyers in the
U.S. and Canada went to work to get Rubin back to face charges.

Troberman and Peifer hammered out Rubin's
plea agreement for many months. At one point last year, she was ready to turn
herself over at the border. But a bureaucratic snafu kept her in Canada for
about three months.

She spent the time reconnecting with
her family in British Columbia after years underground. Then late last year, Rubin's
mom drove her to the border at Blaine, Wash., where she handed herself over to
the FBI.

The plea signed by Rubin admits to arson
and conspiracy to commit arson, and Peifer noted in court that she is eligible
for what is known as a "terrorism enhancement" that bumps up her punishment under
U.S. sentencing guidelines.

But the terms of the highly
structured plea agreement sets limits on the number of years Rubin will spend
in prison. She has agreed not to ask the judge for a sentence of less than five years,
and the government has agreed not to ask for more than 7 1/2 years.

Aiken will have the final say. She set Rubin's sentencing for Jan. 27.

As
part of the bargain, Rubin has agreed to assist the government by telling the
FBI and prosecutors every detail she could remember about the crimes she
committed. But she was firm on one point: She would never tell them the names –
or otherwise identify – any other participants in her crimes, or any actions
attributed to the Animal Liberation Front or Earth Liberation Front.

"She's
not required to talk about anybody but herself," Troberman said.

He
noted that his client's motives were pure, but her methods were not.

"She
knows that now," he said.

A
pair of Rubin's accused co-conspirators, Joseph Mahmoud Dibee and Josephine
Sunshine Overaker, remain fugitives. The FBI believed for a time that Dibee had
fled to Syria, Overaker to Europe.